The roses welcoming parishioners to the Cowichan Valley Church of the Nazarene on Sherman Road have been damaged, the church's pastor, Kevin Austin has confirmed.
"It happened the Wednesday night," Austin noted, saying the garden's caretaker arrived the following morning to find the roses in much worse shape than she'd left them.
"We're not sure who did it," the pastor admitted, "but we suspect we know who it was.
"They kind of destroyed one of the roses in the front of the church, they strew about some garbage over the lawn and that's not unusual because that's something I clean up very often," he added. "It's disappointing."
Rather than be upset that it happened, Austin said his group is choosing to be grateful their new community garden bed project was spared.
Austin explained that the church wanted to be more of a community presence and they had vacant property in behind the church that suited the community garden idea well.
"We have a new community garden we just planted it this year — 15 garden beds and thankfully they didn't touch that. Nine people in the community have rented out these beds plus people in the church have rented out those beds.
Thus far 14 of the 15 beds have been claimed by green thumbs.
"We thought about what could we do to be more useful in our community and we decided on that," he said. "We're thankful those weren't touched."
Meanwhile, the front of the church may look a little different for a while.
"I think our gardener has trimmed the roses right back and is just trying to make them regrow again," he said. "It's unfortunate. It was getting to be quite nice and now it will take years to regrow."
